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It's just a matter of time. TT could catch a handful of people infected with measles because of the significant flow of human traffic by air and sea to the Caribbean and Latin America.
That was what Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh was saying at a press conference held Friday in his department's office at Park Street in Port of Spain.
He added that measles had been eliminated in the Caribbean in 1992, but that numbers had increased in the last two years. He said Venezuela and Brazil had lost their elimination status because of rising numbers. The last death related to measles in the TT occurred in the late 1980s.
TT data on vaccine coverage show that this country has been able to keep the disease at bay, but this could now be changed due to reluctance to vaccination. Deyalsingh said that the reasons for the hesitation about vaccination could be the success of the vaccination, which gave people a false sense of immunity, religious beliefs, principles and myths about the aftermath of the vaccination. vaccine.
He stated that St George Central and St Patrick's were two counties where the rate of hesitation to vaccination had increased.
Deyalsingh said that he was not pressing the panic button, but that he was pressing the warning button.
According to Dr. Eldonna Boisson, Epidemiology Surveillance and Epidemiology Advisor at the Pan American Health Organization / World Health Organization (PAHO / WHO), prior to the introduction of measles vaccine in 1963, measles had caused about 30 million cases and more than 2.5 million deaths each year. Between 2000 and 2017, measles vaccination averted an estimated 21 million deaths worldwide and reduced measles by 80%.
Chief Medical Officer Dr. Roshan Parasram said that measles was an old world disease that was resurging, as has been the case in Europe and the United States in recent times because absence of measles vaccination. .
For TT, the first vaccine at one year is 90% and the second vaccine 92%. PAHO / WHO targets 95% coverage. He added that these figures could be better because they did not include vaccines manufactured by the private sector.
Parasram said that there were 120,000 measles vaccines available, even to include the influx of Venezuelan migrants.
Dr. James Hospedales, director of the Caribbean Caribbean Public Health Agency, said that in 2016-17, there was little or no measles on the screen radar, but that during the past year, a flag of cases was imported.
He said that the Caribbean and Latin America saw every year millions of travelers from Europe and the United States and that with this degree of travel and this mix of different parts of the world, the transmission of contagious diseases increased.
He advised parents if their children were not vaccinated to do so now because measles was "a risky activity".
"It's only a matter of time before we have a secondary transmission because there are too many gaps where, in some cases, the coverage is less than 60-70% and measles does not. There is no need for more resistance than this, it will spread. "
Hospedales said that hotel and tourism workers were in the front line and that although some European countries do not require this information to be communicated to their employees, the situation could have been avoided.
He was referring to the American cruise ship Freewinds, which was quarantined recently after a confirmed case of measles was reported from an infected employee.
Measles is a serious, highly contagious disease that is spread by coughing, sneezing or direct contact. It usually starts with a high fever about ten to 12 days after exposure. A rash appears a few days after the fever. Infected people can pass it on four days before the rash appears and up to four days after it appears.
Measles can kill 30% of infected people. Most measles-related deaths were caused by complications associated with the disease
The most serious complications are blindness, encephalitis, severe diarrhea and dehydration, ear infections or serious respiratory infections such as pneumonia. Serious complications were more common in children under five and adults over 30 years of age.
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